


let it begin (heaven cannot wait)

by islandofme



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And they're gay, Angst, F/F, One-Shot, but also kind of fluff ? ngl my bar for what counts as fluff is low but imho, mostly happy ending, renesmee has two moms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26362408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islandofme/pseuds/islandofme
Summary: “Bella,” Edward says to her, voice quiet and rougher than she has ever heard it, and she is sure he knows what she has not even found words for. Had he seen it in Rosalie’s thoughts or read it on her face?“I’m so sorry,” Bella says, the lump in her throat hurting more fiercely than even her constant, aching thirst. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t know it had until I woke up.”xaka turning into a vampire intensifies everything she ever felt as a human. she just hadn't known she'd fallen in love with rosalie somewhere along the way
Relationships: Rosalie Hale/Bella Swan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 384





	let it begin (heaven cannot wait)

**Author's Note:**

> rosalie and bella get their happy ending. sorry edward
> 
> notes at the top because if you're squeamish there's some vaguely described bella's horrific labour stuff, you could probably just start at ii and not lose too much!
> 
> thanks for reading, hope you enjoy <3

**i. white flame butterflies in my brain**

She thinks she must be on fire, but no flame on Earth could ever burn this hot; this could only be incineration by the most scorching of stars, a blue giant on its way to supernova. Perhaps this _is_ the supernova, her body exploding and collapsing in on itself all at once as she lies still, unable to move a muscle, mind untethered from her unresponsive limbs yet hideously aware of them. Her nerve endings blister like an outline, like streetlights in the rain glaring behind a dark silhouette.

How to make sense of this pain? She ebbs in and out of oblivion, the torture more than her body can bear, but adamant not to be ignored. In these moments, between darkness and flame, there are fleeting instances of clarity, and she strains to remember what it was like before - because there was a _before_ , even as her universe centres on this searing agony.

_Her own body, upright - stomach ballooning forward. Cool hands on hers, holding her steady, soothing her swollen wrists and fingers. A beautiful face - the eyes black where they should be gold, but fiercely tender. Rosalie. Her unexpected defender._

_A cup, tilting forward, dark red spraying in a bloody shower towards the pristine white sheets - leaning for it, and--_

_Ripping, tearing pain - agonising, yet inconsequential compared to what she felt now, the memory almost a comfort. A metallic acid sting in her oesophagus as she vomited blood._

The memories were hazier from here, blurring into the approaching fire. A primal fear, not for herself, but for her baby, the placenta detached - _get him out, get him out, get him out,_ she remembers thinking - had she said it out loud? She couldn’t imagine having a voice anymore, even her screams silent, enduring her agony in utter quiet.

_Edward insisting on morphine, Bella unable to fight - helpless as she’s torn apart - so grateful to Rosalie (“there’s no time, he’s dying!”) for the new pain that sears across her stomach. It was a cleaner pain, like the sweep of a shard of glass; Bella is glad to focus on it and not her suffocating lungs, her rearranging body._

_And then some other chaos, external to her. Bella hearing rather than seeing - snarling, crashing, a deafening thud. A new hand, steadying on her shoulder, holding her gently to the bed; still cold, but different. Larger. Ostensibly more familiar, but also... less. How little Edward had held her recently; it was not the comfort she expected. She wants to call for Rosalie, but the words stick in her throat, no air left in her lungs._

_Soft lips on hers, too hot, too hot, on her blood-starved face, breathing oxygen into her. And then a snap, her spine, the blinding pain twisting to blinding numbness... she fades, until she’s coughing again, and everything hurts from her ribs up - there is nothing below._

_A name, uttered reverently in Edward’s awed voice, rough velvet: Renesmee. A girl. Not the boy she had been so sure of._

_A new strength suffuses through her, rising from somewhere unfathomable. She is going to die, she is sure of it, but not before she holds her baby. She takes her, so hot against her breast, so beautiful - this brown eyed cherub for whom she glows with love._

_A gasp, an inconsequential pain, and then Renesmee is ripped from her arms. She wants to protest, but the surge of energy is gone. Her swan song._

_Her daughter will be okay, she assures herself, even if Edward still does not plan to outlive his wife. She will have Rosalie. She will be loved, fiercely, unerringly, forever; gratitude swells in Bella like a lily in bloom._

_She holds Renesmee’s perfect face in her mind and dies happy._

Except - she isn’t dead, she realises. The immaculate dark, the sublime void had given way to her current torment. Venom, twisting her into something new; a metamorphosis as complete as the caterpillar to the butterfly. Her cocoon, this suffocating paralysis, is a poor shelter, she thinks. It’s a magician’s box without the trick, just white-hot swords cutting her to pieces - the primordial soup of the transformation, her body digesting itself, leaving only her consciousness intact.

At least she knows now that it will end; her body will fail, or she’ll be born anew. This pain won’t last forever. For now, she just has to bear it.

* * *

**ii. every print i left upon the track has led me here**

Consciousness - real consciousness that grounds her to the physical world, not merely the ghastly, inescapable awareness of the venom burn - comes slowly. The periods of nothingness grow more frequent, the circulating venom growing sparse, smothered more easily by the immense dosage of viscous morphine, and then stop entirely; she will never be unconscious again.

Voices ring like bells in her ears, and she can feel the vibrations shimmering in the air like tiny wingbeats against her skin. Beautiful, silken, smooth - but too loud, the words indistinguishable, for only the volume concerned her now. She wanted to tell them to stop shouting, and yet - they were not shouts, no raised edge to the golden tones.

Eventually, she finds the strength to open her eyes, and sees the world in shocking clarity, miniscule details and colours that she had no names for. The fire burns only in her throat now. A hand takes hers, and she turns to see Edward, near-black eyes shining at her. It is not cold enough, his hand, or she is too chilled. He is very beautiful, more so than she had known, but it does not reach her the way it once had. The dust catches her attention, swirling in the light, and then the bulb itself. It’s easy to look at, but it fragments into an eight-colour rainbow.

“You’re finally awake,” Edward says, looking awed, recapturing her attention for only a moment before it flies away again, so much stimulation, something new with every glance around, every breath, every tiny sound that reaches her ears.

“Renesmee?” She asks.

“With Rosalie,” he says, and the world seems to settle down. Her throat burns less fiercely.

“I want to see.”

Hunting first, she’s told, and her mouth dessicates like the Death Valley desert at the mention. Alice insists she see herself first, and she’s annoyed by the distraction until she does, vanity swelling like a bubble in her chest. She’s wildly beautiful, though her eyes are fearsome. They will turn to gold with time.

Edward kisses her, holding nothing back, and her heart does not race. This is not a secret. She is not sure it would do so were it possible, and this is. Bella had been ready to feel a disconnection, to thirst and only thirst, but she is unsure that he is as well prepared. She wonders if he senses the change in her centre of gravity; she is not pulled to him as she once was. 

Hunting is fun, and her new athleticism even more so. She triumphs in her flight from the scent of human blood, her control strong enough that surely they cannot deny her her daughter any longer.

Except Jacob tries - like she would want to drink his sour blood, only the sound of his wet, beating heart offering any temptation, and then she finds out the truth, holds onto her calm until he - he who _imprinted_ on her _tiny baby_ \- calls her daughter Nessie. She doesn’t even kill him, so she’s not sure anyone can criticise her too harshly. At this point she’ll go for the throat of anyone who tries to keep her away from Renesmee, impatience overwhelming her expanded mind, electrifying her muscles with an urge to fight.

“Let her see her daughter,” she hears, and the voice is the most beautiful noise she could imagine, low and lovely and rich, slow flowing like golden honey. Rosalie, she recognises, but it’s like until now she’s only heard her speak down the tinny, static-cracked line of a two-way radio. She had had no concept of the divine reality before. Her body strains towards it, the only two sounds in the cacophonous world that she cares about - that voice, and that heartbeat like a hummingbird's wings. “She won’t hurt her,” Rosalie says, steady and sure, stepping out from the living room to the garden, throwing a haughty glare at Jacob as he moves to hover beside her.

Rosalie is golden and glorious, a trillion times more beautiful with her new eyes, and Renesmee is an angel in her arms. Bella would not be able to forget this vision in front of her, even if her brain were still feeble and human, and she thanks whatever higher power there is or isn’t that this image will never fade, in the eternity stretched out before her.

“She’s been waiting for you,” Edward says, and she almost jumps. With all of her infinite senses reaching forward to drink in her daughter, the blonde holding her, she had forgotten he was there.

Renesmee recognises her, lets her know with a hand on Bella’s cheek and her magic touch, and Bella is in love, in love, in love. She sees the same emotion in Rose’s eyes as she relinquishes the baby to Bella.

“Thank you,” Rosalie says, a sublime voice so quiet only she could possibly hear. Her steady, earnest gaze was intense with gratitude, with something else that Bella did not think had a name. “I owe you everything.”

Bella thinks of her pregnancy, how Rosalie was unwavering, a safe harbour she turned to in the most difficult, painful moments, a lighthouse beam in the dark. “And I you.”

* * *

**iii. I've looked at you with the focus I gave to my birthday candles**

Bella is hunting, exulting in her thrilling new agility, but something weighs on her mind heavier than her thirst; everyone keeps telling her she should be utterly consumed by it, but how can she be when there’s her daughter to think about? When there’s Rosalie?

She’s with Alice, whose dark eyes widen a fraction of a second before Bella speaks, half falling from her predatory stance.

“Is it like... a time thing, getting used to Rose? How do you all not just _stare_ at her?” Bella asks, blurts out, really.

She can’t wrap her head around it, the constant distraction, knowing that whatever she might be doing her time would be better spent drinking in the sight of the blonde. Rosalie had always been the most beautiful of them, but now... if she had breath to steal, the sight of Rosalie in such celestial definition would take it straight from her lungs, over and over and over. It’s always in the back of her mind, except when she and Nessie - _Renesmee_ , she corrects herself - are together away from the blonde, and Bella is engrossed in only her daughter. It is far more often the three of them together, though; these are the moments where Bella feels as though she could live forever without a drop of blood, her thirst paling in significance.

Alice’s laugh catches in the wind like a falling leaf, swirling away on a single breath as her amusement drops from her face, eyes growing serious and then thoughtful. “I don’t know, Bella. I saw her so often in my visions before I met her. It was a little like staring into the sun at first, but not for long. I wasn’t a newborn like you, things weren’t so... intense. Vampires get used to things quickly.”

Alice isn’t saying anything that isn’t true, she’s sure, but Bella can tell she’s withholding something she’s seen.

“Will _I_ get used to it?” Bella asks, all of the hunting tension gone from her limbs, her thirst dry in her mouth yet secondary to her need to know. Alice looks at her, her black eyes large and sad, biting down on her lip. Bella thinks of Edward, and wonders if Alice does too.

“No,” she said, her usually high voice strangely low, mournful clarinet instead of its usual flute. “I don’t think you will.”

* * *

**iv. way more gravity than when we started off**

Bella is still mastering her senses, still learning how to distinguish them. She finds herself knowing things without being sure how she does; it’s like this when Rosalie returns from her hunt with Esme. Bella doesn’t think she heard their return, doesn’t remember when their scents reached her, but she is not surprised when Rosalie comes to find her in her cottage. Edward is out, collecting more blood bags for Renesmee.

The blonde knocks before she gently pushes open the door; for a moment she is framed in the doorway, the daylight behind her glowing like a halo, like she was a saint immortalised in stained-glass. Rosalie moves more slowly around Bella, she’s noticed, as though she’s trying to resist gravity. Bella doesn’t want to even try, rising to her feet with Renesmee in her arms, crossing the room to meet her.

“She missed you,” Bella says. _I missed you_ , she doesn’t.

“I missed you too,” Rosalie says, reaching out to lightly touch the tip of the toddler’s perfect ski-slope nose. “Can I hold her for a while?”

Bella complies, only ever so willingly letting her baby go when the reward is the sight of her in Rosalie’s arms.

“Mommy,” the toddler says when she is suspended exactly between them. Bella’s eyes widen - Renesmee has never spoken aloud before, though they’ve been sure she could if she wanted to. Which of them did she even _mean_? She knows her daughter recognised her when she emerged from her transformation, and had been waiting for her to wake up. Yet she so often reaches for Rose like a comfort blanket, drawn to her first taste of nurture. She meets Rosalie’s stare: equally shocked, glowing with as much love as she felt, awe and pride as Renesmee spoke for the first time, voice as angelic as her face.

Bella realises it didn’t matter who Renesmee was talking of - she could never resent Rosalie’s relationship with her daughter, the very thing that had kept her grounded during her pregnancy, fueled her to smile as she died. 

But then Renesmee reaches up, a hand to each of their cheeks, and Bella feels her child’s impatience flood through her, frustration that her meaning has been missed. _Mommy._ She makes it clear this time, as best she can. Two faces are omnipresent in the flow of images, hers and Rosalie’s. _Mommy._

Of course, Bella thinks. 

She looks away from her beautiful baby, turns to Rosalie, whose perfect face is shining with joy and adoration. It’s etched with apprehension, too, as she returns Bella’s gaze; this is all Rosalie has ever wanted, but she’s afraid she’s overstepped.

Step _closer_ , Bella wants to say. Instead, she smiles, finishes shifting Renesmee’s weight into the blonde’s arms, unwavering in her willingness to share.

“Bella,” Rosalie says, and her eyes are the pale gold of champagne, sparkling in the soft light. She steps closer, only the breadth of Renesmee’s little body between them. Bella has never heard her enchanting voice so reverent, so soft. It spills over with something barely-restrained.

Rose feels it too, she realises. The gravitational pull. They had been in orbit, circling a singular point, and now they’re coming to their denouement, two neutron stars spiralling inwards, about to collide.

They stare at each other for so long, perfectly still, that Renesmee falls asleep. Rosalie gives a shaking sigh as the thrumming heartbeat slows ever-so-slightly, and Bella raises her hand to Rosalie’s soft cheek, resting it where her daughter’s had touched, tilts her own chin upwards.

Rosalie’s forehead falls to rest against hers, the bridges of their noses aligned, the two of them curved over Renesmee like a shelter. Bella can taste Rosalie’s sweet breath, barely an inch of air between their lips. 

They spring apart a second too late as Alice bursts in; she does not look surprised by what she finds, but nor does she look like she’s judging. A sadness flickers over her face - for Edward, Bella is guiltily certain - for barely a fraction of a moment, before it’s once again overwhelmed by an agonised panic.

“I’ve had a vision,” she said. “It’s the Volturi. They know.”

* * *

**v. he’s all that i ever knew of love**

**“** Bella,” Edward says to her, voice quiet and rougher than she has ever heard it, and she is sure he knows what she has not even found words for. Had he seen it in Rosalie’s thoughts or read it on her face? All is quiet now, their house guests leaving, the Volturi gone, excuses for putting this conversation off fading. They are in their cottage, Renesmee sleeping in the other room. It’s dark outside and in, but it does not matter to Bella’s new eyes; the sorrow and confusion that burn in Edward’s eyes may as well light up his face like a flame.

“I’m so sorry,” Bella says, the lump in her throat hurting more fiercely than even her constant, aching thirst. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t know it had until I woke up.”

“What were you thinking, Bella, when your heart stopped? What was on your mind?”

She has been thinking of this for a while - about whether it would be possible at all, or if she would need more time - but in this moment, she is certain. How better to help him understand what she hardly does herself than to show him?

It’s her clearest memory, the least shrouded of her humanity, the last. She pushes her shield away from her, and remembers. She feels her love for Renesmee, pride and joy and protective instinct swelling in her like a wave that would never crash to the shore. And then she recalls thinking of Rosalie, her beautiful face so crystal clear, sure that she would care for her daughter, give her love and attention and mothering in the wake of whatever else, whatever happened with Edward or Jacob after she died. The gratitude she felt, feels. The love that pumped in her heart in its final beats, fossilised into its cells forever.

Edward puts his head in his hands, mussing his beautiful bronze curls, tormenting them with his twisting fingers. She knows he understands how she had grown to rely on Rosalie in his resentment and avoidance of her pregnancy, how that bloomed into trust, how that faith had become fundamental to Bella as she risked her life for her child. Bella did not pray to a God, because she didn’t have to, not when Rosalie would _never ever_ fail her. And how could she not love her for that?

“I let you down,” he says, and Bella doesn’t argue with him, because it’s true. Her eyes sting like she should be crying, but she cannot; she will always adore him, but it’s tertiary now, a distant third tier to Rosalie and Renesmee, entwined together in their almost inseparable second and first. “And I’ll have to live forever with the price of that. 

“I’ll need some space for a while. But Bella,” his tortured topaz eyes turn up to her, “you’ll never have to fear that I’ll let our daughter down again.”

She does not doubt him now. Bella takes his hand, loving and loving and loving this boy who taught her what it was to do so, but not enough; her love for him is like all the great lakes, but she loves Rosalie like the ocean, vast, powerful, untameable.

“You always had so much love to give,” Edward says, reading her open mind. He lies his free hand on top of hers, clasping it like a prayer. 

* * *

**vi. on i go, not toward or away**

Her afterlife is not what she expected. She had imagined it so often before she turned, golden daydreams, eternity with Edward, forever young, forever beautiful, forever in love.

She had not been wrong for the most part, only it was not Edward that her soul sung for - and she was sure the change had not stolen that, not when she could see Rosalie’s so clearly, her gaze truly a window. It was like she had viewed her future through a rippling pond, the image distorted, but now she had dived past the shrouded surface, and found Atlantis beneath, more wondrous than she had ever dreamed.

Her life is golden hair and golden eyes and golden kisses, mutual joys and mutual sorrows. Bella once thought she needed Edward like air, Jacob like sunshine - she no longer breathes, and she eschews the light in favour of clouded places, safe havens for her family. Rosalie is the solid ground beneath her feet, the wind at her back, the cleansing rain on her marble skin; she is the world itself. Every day of her long existence her love for Rosalie, her lover, her wife, her daughter’s second mother, has grown. It stretches endlessly like the haze of the desert sky, so familiar to Bella in her youth.

It’s still strained between her and Edward, even all these decades later, but they’ve made progress. He had so graciously sacrified his happiness for hers, and she is unendingly grateful to him for being her first, beautiful love, an incredible father to their child. He takes fewer trips to see the Denali coven now, able to spend more time with the family where they live now near Astoria, now that his pain is fading to a scar. He had taken off for a while, once Nessie was eighteen and grown, had left for college. He, like they all do, visits Forks as much as he can while remaining inconspicuous. Their daughter lives there with Jacob on the Quileute reservation, still young, their secret kept by his kin, the grandchildren of his wolf-brothers. Sometimes they visited together. It had become easier between them as her control over her shield grew; he never has to hear Rosalie’s thoughts anymore, isn’t exposed to all that he had loved and lost in excruciating detail. They’re friends, she thinks. They would never be siblings like the others, yet she holds hope that the chasm between them will seal completely closed one day.

Bella looks to Rosalie, reclined next to her, stretched out on the bed - glorious, beautiful, relaxed - and leans in to kiss her. 

“Good morning, love,” Rosalie says, as morning breaks, a rare sunny day. Her skin shines in the light that streams through the easterly window. She tilts into Bella’s touch, seeking her lips again, slowly, lazily. 

They have time.


End file.
